Babylon. Dreams + Nighthawks. Session 44. Beast.

The top four corps from this year's tour have taken fans (and judges) on a wild ride so far. For the longest time, Bluecoats remained the only unbeaten corps—that all ended when the Blue Devils made their way out East. Blue Devils and Vanguard flopped back and forth in California in the early season before THAT, while Carolina Crown has been slowly creeping up toward the top three the whole time.

Fighting For Fractions

When it gets to regional season each summer, things tend to kick into overdrive mode. Well, in 2018, things are especially interesting, let's say overdrive with a little turbo.

The top four corps are literally fighting for fractions of a point each night as they compete against one another.

After 2 1/2 weeks away from one another, Santa Clara Vanguard and the Blue Devils saw each other in Broken Arrow, OK, with Bluecoats being thrown into the mix as well. Vanguard came out on top just like in Riverside, CA—when the two last met.

Once the corps made it to Texas, gaps started showing consistency and Carolina Crown joined the conversation following some wholesale changes that brought the corps' score up considerably in the Midwest. Carolina Crown closed the gap by a lot between TOC Texas in Katy, Texas, and San Antonio—throwing them right into the running for a medal.

Looking at each individual caption, the numbers start to tell a very interesting story developing within the top four.

The George Zingali-Angelica-Sanford-Brazale-Ott Best Section Award

At the end of the DCI World Championships, the caption awards are given to the corps with the best section in each of the corresponding caption or sub-caption. In particular, the awards are the Donald Angelica Best General Effect Award, Fred Sanford Best Percussion Award, John Brazale Best Visual Award, George Zingali Best Color Guard Award, and finally the Jim Ott Best Brass Award.

Because these awards can make or break a season for members trying to reach the pinnacle of their activity, we wanted to look a little closer at some of the more interesting facts related to these scores.

Brass

Carolina Crown has dominated the brass caption year after year including capturing six Jim Ott Best Brass titles since 2009. During Texas tour, the brass section out of Ft. Mills, SC, took first two times over the other three corps, despite finishing in fourth overall for each of the shows.

However, the brass caption is also the most highly contested caption. The gap between first and fourth on each night in Texas is less than half of a point. Not to mention, Santa Clara and Bluecoats managed to pass Crown at TOC Texas in Katy on Friday night.

On July 23 in Mesquite, Texas, SCV was just 0.05 behind Crown in brass with Bluecoats only a tenth back from Vanguard. The Blue Devils brass has yet to top Crown's brass in the same venue.

Percussion

The percussion caption is also very interesting due to the fact that the placements remained completely unchanged throughout Texas tour. In Katy, San Antonio, and Mesquite, Vanguard had the best percussion with Blue Devils in second, Crown in third, and Bluecoats in fourth.

Carolina Crown has the most potential to make a move in this sub-caption because of how close they've been chasing Blue Devils recently.

General Effect

If you've been around the activity for a few years, you probably already know that general effect runs the world when it comes to DCI. General effect has the largest potential to make a difference in overall score due to it being worth 10 points more than the other two captions: overall music and overall visual.

Much like the percussion caption, the placements from 1-4 have gone unchanged throughout the entirety of Texas tour. Vanguard is holding strong in first. Bluecoats closely behind in second. There is a small gap between Bluecoats and Blue Devils and then a larger gap between BD and Crown.